Fiction

"[E]ach story inventively unfurls a different desire, longing, or frustration" — Jacinda Townsend, author Saint Monkey

In her debut collection of short fiction, Reneilwe Malatji invites us into the intimate lives of South African women—their whispered conversations, their love lives, their triumphs and heartbreaks. This diverse chorus of female voices recounts misadventures with love, family, and community in powerful stories woven together with anger, politics, and wit. Malatji crafts an engaging collection full of rich, memorable characters who navigate work, love, patriarchy, and racism with thoughtfulness, strength, and humor.

The first book in Peter Church's Dark Web Trilogy

When a sexy engineer hires a reformed hacker in Cape Town to help solve her boss's disappearance, the hunt quickly becomes deadly.

Young, bright and sexy, Carla Vitale has been handpicked to run Supertech, Africa’s leading independent Engineering firm. Then one Friday afternoon in Cape Town, her dream is shattered. Her boss and mentor, Nial Townley, disappears, his luxury vehicle is found in a crevice at the bottom of Chapman’s Peak and $USD 20m is missing from the Supertech’s overseas accounts. Three months later and the police are no closer to solving the riddle.

No job, no car, no phone, Carla turns to the one person she believes can help: software hacker turned day-trader, Daniel Le Fleur. But Le Fleur’s maintaining a low profile in Bantry Bay and he’s in no mood to ruin the serendipity.

After a successful career in Information Technology, Peter Church’s first crime novel, Dark Video, was published in South Africa and Australia in 2008. He has since published Bitter Pill, a crime thriller, and Blue Cow Sky, “a novella of sexual proportions,” both in South Africa. Church is a member of SA PEN. He lives in Cape Town with his wife, the artist Paula Church, and three children. Crackerjack is his debut in North America.

Winner of the 2017 German Crime Fiction Prize

Moses wants one thing: to get home, where his girlfriend and a cold beer are waiting for him. But his car breaks down on an empty street, not a single human being in sight. Moses slips into The Pines, a gated community, in hopes to find help from a university classmate who lives there. Over there, in the “white” world, everything seems calm, orderly, safe. But once inside, he feels like more of an outsider than ever. And he makes a terrible mistake.

Mistaken identities, racial profiling, and class politics form the backdrop of this intense thriller. The Wall tackles the issues of gun violence, racism, and exclusion in contemporary South Africa—problems that are equally relevant in the United States.

"Annas works like a film director, bombarding us with shot and counter-shot. The reader races to the explosion… an actual shootout. THE WALL is a fantastic, yet very funny, novel... Fast, hard and dangerous. A cheetah in book form." Die Welt (Germany)

"Fear and distrust of anyone who counts as 'the other.' [...]…jam-packed with action, thrills and suspense. A brilliant success!" Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany)

"Ducking, hiding, running - these are what drive the novel's dynamics, its minute-by-minute choreography. Instincts dictate behaviors. In this case: prejudice, aversions, and racism." Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)

Before writing novels, Max Annas worked as a journalist. A renowned film critic, his first novel, The Farm, is currently under film production in South Africa.

• From the Dublin Literary Award and Women's Prize for Fiction longlisted author of The Woman Next Door and An Unusual Grief
  
• Winner of the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize
• Shortlisted for the Etisalat Prize for Literature
• Featured in the New York Times' "Globetrotting" sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world
• One of "Seven new and noteworthy fiction titles about South Africa" The Globe and Mail

Wandering in Cape Town, Leke stalks people, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of a cure. But he isn't sure what ails him--loneliness, or the family curse.

Abandoned by his birth mother, losing his adoptive mother to cancer, and failing to connect with his distant adoptive father, Leke--a troubled young man living in Cape Town--has developed some odd and possibly destructive habits: he stalks strangers, steals small objects, and visits doctors and healers in search of friendship. Through a series of letters written to him from prison by his Nigerian father, a man he has never met, Leke learns about the family curse--a curse which his father had unsuccessfully tried to remove. Leke's search to break the curse leads him to strange places.

Yewande Omotoso is an architect with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel Bom Boy was published in South Africa by Modjaji Books in 2011 and was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016), Omotoso's second novel, was published to critical acclaim. She lives in Johannesburg.

Religious and ethnic conflict may be the Horn of Africa's most enduring recent legacy. But beneath its recent history of war and displacement lies human stories—families, clans, lovers, neighbors, and friends, all bound together through common cultural, religious, and historical ties.

The Lion's Binding Oath, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf's collection of short stories, introduces readers to the people of Somalia and their struggles: their humanity, faith, identity, friendship, and family bonds, as whispers of war grow louder around them. Through stories that span the years before and during Somali's civil war, Yusuf weaves together Somalia's political, social, and religious conflicts with portrayals of the country's love of poetry, music, and soccer.

Yusuf's collection is a powerful examination of love and resilience in a country torn apart by war, and written with deep compassion for the lives of its characters.

Ahmed Ismail Yusuf has lived in Minneapolis since fleeing Somalia in the late 80s. He did not speak English when he arrived, he was a high-school dropout, and he was not sure what his actual age was. Today he has two college degrees and is the author of Somalis in Minnesota, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. In 2017, The History Theatre of St. Paul, Minnesota produced his short play, “A Crack in the Sky,” a memoir about how Yusuf found inspiration in Maya Angelou and Muhammad Ali during his early days as an immigrant to the U.S.

The second installment in Peter Church's Dark Web Trilogy

A minibus taxi flipping spectacularly on its head; two teenagers engaged in forbidden sex in a shopping-mall rest room; a raunchy table dance in a Cape Town strip club. How are these scenes connected to a beautiful young woman running through a forest near the university early on a Sunday morning?

Alistair Morgan is the key. A gifted law student with a glittering career in the offing, Alistair seems to have it all: looks, charm and money. But his privileged lifestyle is about to be turned upside down as he is lured deeper and deeper into the sinister online world of Dark Video, where reality blurs and morals unravel.

Toggling between the urban landscape of Africa’s southern tip and Seattle, Washington in the mid- to late-2000s, just as YouTube and other video sharing sites were getting started, Dark Video explores the most disturbing and darkest corners of the digital world, where some people will pay for unimaginable videos and others make money in the most depraved way possible.

Family secrets run deep for Grace, a young girl growing up in Cape Town during the 1980s. Her family secrets spill over into adulthood, and threaten to ruin the respectable life she has built for herself.

When an old childhood friend emerges after disappearing a decade earlier during a clash with apartheid riot police in the Cape Flats, where South Africa’s coloured community makes its home, Grace’s memories of her childhood come rushing back, and she is confronted, once again, with the loss that has shaped her. She has to face up to the truth or continue to live a lie—but the choice is not straightforward. Unmaking Grace is an intimate portrayal of violence, both personal and political, and its legacy on one person’s life. It meditates on the long shadow cast by personal trauma, showing the inter-generational imprint of violence and loss on people’s lives.

Within Fatal Measure, the fifth installment of Codi Sander’s journey, Codi and her team must rewrite history and solve a federal cold case as they uncover a nest of cleverly trained assassins. 

An American hero from North Korea is not all he appears as he compels Codi and her team to examine the past for a federal cold case. They seek out a team of hired killers and the cunning businesswoman running the operation—at a time when there’s never been a bigger demand for assassins. With a trail of bodies left in their wake, Codi and her team must take matters into their own hands. 

Crosshairs lock on to Codi Sanders as she’s pitted against the very best in Fatal Measure. And as a dangerous game of cat and mouse ensues, the stakes rise from an unsolvable case to one of life or death—pushing Codi to her limit.

• One of "10 Novels You Should Read in June" —CrimeReads
• Starred review, Publishers Weekly
• Listed on CrimeReads' "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020: Summer Reading Edition"
• Listed in the New York Times "Globetrotting" 2020 preview

Outside the Lines is a journey through the underbelly of Johannesburg, South Africa and the intimacy of family drama scattered across racial, religious, and class divisions. Drug addict Cathleen is kidnapped and her distracted, middle-class family fails to notice her absence; Zilindile, who services Cathleen’s drug habit, and his Muslim Indian girlfriend Farhana, struggle to make sense of their relationship despite their very different backgrounds; and domestic worker Flora and the silent Runyararo, who was painting Cathleen’s house until accused by Cathleen’s father of stealing, become entangled with romance and criminals, leading to the ultimate tragedy. A taut novel that walks the line between family drama, crime novel, thriller, and black comedy.

Ruthless underworld criminal Rocco Robano’s group of right wing fanatics, inspired by crazed evangelist Heinz Dieter, are responsible for mayhem and murder in the city of Cape Town. As they prepare to leave for their new home, Aurora, a protected community where the White Brothers, the Core, will live out their days in solidarity, they run amok in the city already cursed by xenophobia.

Employed to find a set of missing uncut diamonds, ex-addict Rae Valentine, a feisty, sexy, intrepid, newly-minted Private Investigator, falls prey to the gang of men intent to use her and destroy her for sport. Rae can’t outrun the storm of righteous fury as the vicious gang escalate their violence. As a victim of a kidnapping, she does what she can to protect herself from these depraved and barbarous men, and to save her PI partner, Vincent Saldana, from certain death.

From Cape Town to the banks of the Orange River in Namibia, the tension rises as Rae fights for her life and discovers that the missing diamonds are linked to the illicit dealings of the brutal gang without conscience.

The final installment in Peter Church's Dark Web Trilogy

“A fast-paced and gripping thriller—expect several twists along the way.” —Cosmopolitan

Amid rumors of bartenders paid to spike drinks and then deliver drugged college women to paying, eager patrons, University of Cape Town (UCT) authorities move quickly to limit the damage—but the police don’t want to believe there is a problem. A world away in Seattle, Carlos De Palma, the shadowy operator behind Dark Video, is plotting his survival strategy in the ever-changing Internet landscape. With his wealthy clientele clamoring for heightened thrills, Carlos begins tapping into a new service that blurs the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. Meanwhile, UCT student Robbie is sent into a sinister underground world where no price is too high to pay to deliver every fantasy—no matter how twisted.

Bitter Pill, part of Church’s dark web trilogy, is a gripping thriller that sweeps through the intoxicating haunts of Cape Town’s nightlife to explode in an adrenaline-laced sprint through the violent landscape of stalking, sexual deviation, and murder.

• 2022 Shortlist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
• Winner, Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa
• Winner, 2011 Herman Charles Bosman Award
• Winner, Sunday Times Fiction Prize
• Winner, The Sunday Times Literary Award

Sipho, a 17-year-old from the Umlazi township, drops out of high school and joins a car hijacking syndicate to make a name for himself and escape his family’s low-income life. Along with hijacking partners Musa and Vusi, Sipho learns the tricks of the dangerous trade and pushes deeper into the underbelly of Umlazi under the guidance of gang leader Sibani, while partying heavily and juggling different women nightly alongside his longtime girlfriend Nana.

Candid and unapologetic, Young Blood is the story of the intricate balance of circumstance and choice, swift gain and incredible loss, as Sipho finds out how far he can push his luck before the damage is irrevocable – and the consequences deadly. Both a red-hot crime novel of car heists, sex, and rival gangs and a coming of age story of a teenager navigating the costs of the fast life, Young Blood reveals the devastating violence and raw beauty of life in South Africa’s townships.

From Commonwealth Book Prize Shortlisted Author Bridget Pitt

Finalist for the Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction and the Sunday Times Literary Fiction Long List 

A Zulu foundling and a white missionary’s child raised as brothers in a world intent on making them enemies. A sweeping tale of identity, kinship, and atonement, set in 1870s South Africa, a decade of ruthless colonial aggression against the nation's indigenous people.

Moses, a Zulu baby discovered on a riverbank, and Daniel, the son of white missionaries, are raised as brothers on the Umzinyathi mission in 19^th century Zululand, South Africa. As an infant, Daniel narrowly escapes an attack by a rhino and develops an intense corporeal connection to animals which challenges the religious dogma on which he is raised. Despite efforts by his adoptive mother to raise the boys as equals, Moses feels like an outsider to both white and Zulu society, and seeks certainty in astronomy and science. Only through each other do the brothers find a sense of belonging.

At Umzinyathi, Moses and Daniel are cushioned from the harsh realities of the expanding colony in neighboring Natal—where ancient spiritualism is being demonized, vast natural beauty faces rampant destruction, and the wealth of the colonizer depends on the engineered impoverishment of the indigenous. But when they leave the mission to work on a relative’s sugar estate and accompany him on a hunting safari, the boys are thrown into a world that sees their bond as a threat to the colonial order, and must confront an impossible choice: adapting to what society expects of them or staying true to each other.

With elements of magic realism, Eye Brother Horn is the heart-wrenching story of how two children born of vastly different worlds strive to forge a true brotherhood with each other and with other species, and to find ways to heal the deep wounds inflicted by the colonial expansion project.

"This transcendent and powerful testament to the indomitable human spirit is not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

Book 1 in the City of Kings trilogy

As Imogen Zula Nyoni, aka Genie, lies in a coma at Mater Dei Hospital after having suffered through a long illness, her family and friends struggle to come to terms with her impending death. This is the story of Genie, who has gifts that transcend time and space. It is also the story of her forebears - Baines Tikiti, who, because of his wanderlust, changed his name and ended up walking into the Indian Ocean; his son, Livingstone Stanley Tikiti, who, during the war, took as his nom de guerre Golide Gumede and who became obsessed with flight; and Golide's wife, Elizabeth Nyoni, a country-and-western singer self-styled after Dolly Parton, blonde wig and all. 

With the lightest of touches, and with an overlay of magical-realist beauty, this novel sketches, through the lives of a few families and the fate of a single patch of ground, decades of national history (a country in Southern Africa that is never named) - from colonial occupation through the freedom struggle, to the devastation wrought by the sojas, the HIV virus, and The Man Himself. At turns mysterious and magical, but always honest, The Theory of Flight explores the many ways we lose those we love before they die.

An epic spanning more than half a century of Taiwan's history, this breathtaking historical novel traces the fortunes of the Pengs, a family of Hakka Chinese settlers, across three generations from the 1890s, just before Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, through World War II. Li Qiao brilliantly re-creates the dramatic world of these pioneers—and the colonization of Taiwan itself—exploring their relationships with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and their struggle to establish their own ethnic and political identities.

This carefully researched work of fiction draws upon Li's own experiences and family history, as well as oral and written histories of the era. Originally published in Chinese as a trilogy, this newly translated edition is an abridgement for English-speaking readers and marks the work's first appearance in the English-speaking world. It was well-received in Taiwan as an honest—and influential—recreation of Taiwan's history before the relocation of the Republic of China from the mainland to Taiwan.

Because Li's saga is so deeply imbued with the unique culture and complex history of Taiwan, an introduction explaining the cultural and historical background of the novel is included to help orient the reader to this amazingly rich cultural context. This informative introduction and the sweeping saga of the novel itself together provide an important view of Taiwan's little known colonial experience.

Joey Torino is a man who has tired of the busy, and dangerous, life he has led, and has simply decided to opt out. He is done with all that—the pressures of doing something that someone else wants him to do, the risks of doing things he questions, resents, or even disagrees with. And he has managed to escape that life, quietly, without fanfare or animosity, and with just enough income to be able to live, in the northern forests of Maine, in the secluded, modest style he prefers. And he is happy in his simple life here.

But then a message from his past arrives. Pen Highsmith has another difficult mission for him, and although those dangerous episodes in Russia are long past now, Joey’s "special skills" are needed again.

Joey faces a difficult situation, involving the Russians, a complicated low-key civil conflict, ancient suspicions and animosities, and a ruthless, relentless enemy, hidden in the mountains—in Afghanistan. And the monumental investments of the Wilde Oil company might be put at risk, under certain circumstances and in some situations.

There are clear risks, and potential dangers, which have to be dealt with and surmounted, in a country, in a region, which is complicated and potentially dangerous. So Highsmith reaches out to Joey Torino.

The whole Communist world is in the middle of a democratic revolution. Hall Gardner’s novel depicts the protests taking place prior to the June 1989 Tiananmen Square repression—a subject still taboo in China.

Hired to teach English, Mylex H. Galvin records his experience in his “Anti-Marco Polo” journal after he meets expats from around the world, while trying to come to grips with the Chinese language, history, and politics.

Galvin becomes disillusioned with the poverty and environmental destruction that he finds in China; his barefoot doctor heroes are not capable of treating AIDS; Chinese and African students clash in Nanjing—with no sense of international solidarity.

As the democracy movement heats up, he is torn between the love of Tao Baiqing, a Daoist, and Mo Li, a student of English Lit, and unwittingly betrays the ties between the journalist, Hayford, and the democracy activist, Chia Pao-yu—accused of leaking “top secrets” to Hayford.

As Galvin studies China’s relations with the Western world since Marco Polo, with emphasis on the “hundred years of humiliation,” he becomes haunted by nightmares of a “clash of civilizations” and warns against a coming Apocalyptic Color War between the Balding Eagle and the Chinese Dragon—as the latter transmogrifies from Red into shades of Red-Brown-Black.

“Full of memorable images and singing lines of prose.” Sarah Waters on Donald S. Murray's previous work 

From the author of the multi award-winning Scottish bestseller As the Women Lay Dreaming comes the remarkable “unreliable biography” of serial swindler Karl Einarsson.

As a child of the late nineteenth century in the North Atlantic’s windswept, fog-bound Faroe Islands, Karl Einarsson grows up believing he is superior to his peers, destined for a life of art and adventure. As soon as he is old enough, he sets out for Denmark and begins his own reinvention.

Once untethered from his past, Einarsson’s lies begin to spiral. He begins a life of serial scamming, swindling everyone from fishermen to aristocrats. He has set his sights on Atlantis, but when his schemes find him in 1930s Berlin, for the first time Einarsson is forced to reckon with something bigger than himself. As the Nazis rise to power around him, his indifference becomes unwitting complicity, and even betrayal. 

Based on the true story of Karl Einarsson’s life, this is an outlandish tale of island claustrophobia, of those who leave and those who stay behind, and the many dangers of delusions, deceit, and false identities.

An unforgettable story of outrunning poverty through the power of stories and imagination.

In a neglected part of town beset with social problems, from unemployment and crime to inequalities of health and education, a twelve-year-old girl sees an opportunity to claim a new identity for herself.

Escaping her chaotic home life, Sherrie-Lee witnesses a bungled bank robbery and manipulates one of the failed robbers into taking her in. Alone and away from home she is free to be whoever she wants, inventing stories and personas to make sense of the seemingly random world she lives in. In her new freedom she finds a mixed sense of possibility and loneliness, along with a growing worry for her younger brother back home. But it’s not long before Sherrie-Lee’s deceits start catching up with her and she’s forced to flee once again.

Fossils expertly captures the powerless half-light of adolescence and the shaky existence of all who are lost.

A haunting exploration of the Cold War arms race that tells the story of a true, covered-up germ warfare incident in a remote part of Scotland, involving the US, Canadian, and UK governments.

NOMINATED FOR THE 2021 HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE

Operation Cauldron, 1952: Top-secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst. And one government scientist wrestles with his own inner anguish over the testing, struggling to navigate the moral arguments for and against such dangerous testing and extreme deterrent weapons. When a noxious cloud of plague bacteria is released into the path of a passing trawler, disaster threatens. Will a deadly pandemic be inevitable?

A haunting exploration of the costs and fallout of warmongering, Donald S Murray follows his prize-winning first novel with an equally moving exploration of another little-known incident in the Outer Hebridean island where he grew up.

The personal collides with the political in this literary tour-de-force. In the 1950s, an eminent British writer pens a novel questioning the ethics of the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—but soon he’s trying to outrun his own past.

Hakone, Japan, 2003. An eminent British writer in his 70s, Sir Edward Strathairn, returns to a resort in the Japanese mountains where, in his youth, he spent a beautiful, snowed-in winter.

It was there he wrote his best-selling novel, The Waterwheel, accusing America of being in denial about the horrific aftermath of the Tokyo firebombings and the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

London, England, 1952. A young Edward falls in love with an avant-garde American artist, Macy. After their tumultuous relationship and breakup, he heads for Japan, where he is smitten again as he writes the novel that makes him famous. 

This is as much a thrilling romance as it is a sensitive exploration of blame, power and guilt in postwar America and Japan. With a narrator whose behavior strikes the national conscience as much as his own, An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful will stay with readers long after the final page is turned.

Approval is a powerful meditation on judgment, the adoption process, and fatherhood, told from a perspective rarely explored in fiction: a man’s response to a couple’s infertility.

Approval follows would-be parents David and Cici through a series of forays into the past as they go through the motions of applying to adopt a child. Their story builds a picture of hope, vulnerability and fear as David is put under intense and intrusive scrutiny during their battle against faceless bureaucracy. From family background and early experiences to adult relationships, he is forced to revisit uncomfortable – sometimes painful – episodes, in the hope of meeting the authority’s requirements. 

Confronting a lonely, difficult and uncertain path to family life, and raising questions about how much intervention and judgement is necessary for the state to ascertain fitness to parent, Approval ultimately invites the reader to decide.

Acclaimed Dutch author Saskia Goldschmidt explores the dangers of industrial gas extraction, changing farming methods and their impact on our environment, and what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth, in this compelling family saga.

Femke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, while her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by a gas extraction operation near their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the state-owned gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help.

In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart.

From the leading lady of Scottish historical mysteries comes her US debut novel: a shocking tale of betrayal and murder in the court of Mary, Queen of Scots.

1567, Scotland: no place for a woman. Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son. She can rely only on the loyalty of her ladies-in-waiting, chiefly Marie Seton. Meanwhile the political turmoil in the country is mirrored behind the walls of beautiful Fyvie Castle. Lilias’s marriage to Marie’s nephew, the ruthlessly ambitious Alexander Seton, goes awry after the birth of yet another daughter. He blames her—and contemplates drastic action. To what lengths will a man go to secure a son and heir?

The Green Lady is a shocking tale of intrigue, secrets, treachery, and murder, based on true events, but seen from a different perspective than is found in most history books. Casting a fascinating light on the ruthless nature of power, the story highlights the precarious position of sixteenth-century women, even those in the most privileged of circumstances.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and named among the 50 most notable new books from Africa, Castles from Cobwebs follows one girl’s transition from youthful innocence to understanding as she navigates questions about family, identity, and race.

"I'd always known that I was Brown. Black was different though; it came announced. Black came with expectations, of rhythm and other things that might trip me up."

Imani is a foundling. Rescued as a baby and raised by nuns on a remote Northumbrian island, she grows up with an ever-increasing feeling of displacement. Full of questions, Imani turns to her shadow, Amarie, and her friend Harold. When Harold can't find the answers, she puts it down to what the nuns call her "greater purpose". At nineteen, Imani answers a phone call that will change her life: she is being called to Ghana after the sudden death of her biological mother. 

Past, present, faith and reality are spun together in this enthralling debut. Following her transition from innocence to understanding, Imani's experience illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.

Kiviuq's Journey retells the legend of Kiviuq, one of the most important and well-known legends in all of Inuit mythology, just as it has been told in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut for centuries.

Late Kivalliq-region Elder Henry Isluanik lovingly retells this legend of a lost Inuit hunter who must pass through many obstacles, using his own knowledge and quick wit to outsmart many foes, in order to find his way home.

With black-and-white line illustrations by acclaimed Inuit artist Germaine Arnaktauyok, this book is a definitive and authentic printed account of an important Inuit traditional story.

Intended for adult readers, this is a perfect selection for Inuit studies students.

A novel based on the shocking true eighteenth-century story of a Scottish noblewoman whose own husband faked her death and exiled her to a remote island, where she could never be found.

Edinburgh, January 1732. It’s the funeral of Rachel, wife of high-ranking aristocrat Lord Grange, whose unexpected death has shocked the mourners.

But Rachel is, in fact, very much alive. She has been brutally kidnapped and her death has been faked—by her own husband. Whether punishment for being “too feisty for a lady” and not submissive enough for a wife, or to cover up his treasonous Jacobite leanings, or simply to replace her with his long-time mistress, he has banished Rachel to a remote and barren island. There she will be subjected to a life of hardship and loneliness, unable to speak the islanders’ language, far from her beloved children and without hope of being found.

Lady Grange has until now been remembered only by her husband’s unflattering account, but this novel reveals events from the perspective of the real Lady Grange. At last, centuries later, her story is reclaimed.

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and named among the 50 most notable new books from Africa, Castles from Cobwebs follows one girl’s transition from youthful innocence to understanding as she navigates questions about family, identity, and race.

"I'd always known that I was Brown. Black was different though; it came announced. Black came with expectations, of rhythm and other things that might trip me up."

Imani is a foundling. Rescued as a baby and raised by nuns on a remote Northumbrian island, she grows up with an ever-increasing feeling of displacement. Full of questions, Imani turns to her shadow, Amarie, and her friend Harold. When Harold can't find the answers, she puts it down to what the nuns call her "greater purpose". At nineteen, Imani answers a phone call that will change her life: she is being called to Ghana after the sudden death of her biological mother. 

Past, present, faith and reality are spun together in this enthralling debut. Following her transition from innocence to understanding, Imani's experience illuminates the stories we all tell to make ourselves whole.

The three stories in this volume are well known across the Inuit world. The longest story here is the Legend of Kiviuq who is a figure of almost epic proportions. Kiviuq is spared because he is kind.

The story of Kaujjarjuq is about a man who has been taught to "be patient in suffering." His brother trains him to overcome his physical weakness and prepare to defeat his enemies.

The third story is about a proud young woman who refuses to marry, and is written in the form of a play.

Akinirmut Unipkaaqtaut was first published in 1996.

Award-winning science fiction writer Sean A. Tinsley and respected Inuit author Rachel A. Qitsualik lend gothic interpretation to Inuit shamanism in this original collection of dark fantasy for modern audiences.

Drawing on familiar tropes of the fantasy and science-fiction genres, Ajjiit gives fans of mainstream fantasy fiction and the short stories of writer such as Tanith Lee and Charles de Lint a whole new mythological world to discover.

This is Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (Inuit traditional knowledge) in the flesh, co-editor and translator Jaypeetee Arnakak writes in his introduction to this volume of traditional Inuit stories. The underlying events of a story are perfect spots to encode advice, explanations, and landmarks: the medium is the message. Inuit legends and stories are not mere superstitious musings. What they contain is far richer and more profound than what a superficial glance can grasp. This rich volume contains thirty-three versions of traditional stories, transcribed and edited from oral recordings of ten Inuit elders from two High Arctic communities, Arctic Bay and Igloolik.

Unikkaaqtuat is the Inuktitut word meaning "to tell stories."

This definitive collection of Inuit legends is thoughtfully introduced and carefully annotated to provide the historical and cultural context in which to understand this rich oral tradition. Fascinating and educational, this little-known part of Canada's heritage will captivate readers of all ages. As a work of historical and cultural preservation, this textbook will be invaluable to those studying Inuit.

“Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—and these spine-tingling horror stories by Northern writers show just how dangerous darkness can be. A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that beckons, waiting to unleash the terror behind it. A post-apocalyptic community in the far North where things aren’t quite what they seem. With chilling tales from award-winning authors Richard Van Camp, Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Aviaq Johnston, and others, this collection will thrill and entertain even the most seasoned horror fan.

Well-loved and respected community member, Mark Kalluak, has collected stories from around Arviat since the 1970s, including stories he grew up hearing his mother tell. In this delightful book for audiences of all ages, Mr. Kalluak shares his favourite versions of traditional and personal tales, lovingly illustrating and translating them himself.

Based primarily on explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen’s transcriptions of oral tales, the stories in this anthology of old Greenlandic myths and legends have been passed down through generations. This collection features stories about children and young people—stories that were told in the depths of winter, that the youngest listeners would one day tell to their own children.

Talking animals, flying shamans, orphans so poor they have to walk barefoot through the snow, and men so strong they can carry a whale all on their own: you’ll meet all of them and more in this collection.

In “The Net,” a girl and her mother arrive at their secluded cabin on a frozen lake to find their fishing net has been attacked, a massive hole ripped through the middle. After the net has been mended and the night’s catch eaten, the daughter sits awake playing with a bit of leftover netting string. When she was a girl, her grandmother taught her to make string figures—just as her mother had taught her—a game played by Inuit for generations, but a game not to be taken lightly . . . as the daughter plays late into the night, and the mother sleeps, other monstrous forces are soon awakened from beneath the frozen lake.

In “Before Dawn” a young boy runs out onto the tundra to play with his new friend by his side, venturing far beyond his mother’s rule that he not stray past the inuksuk on the horizon. The boy’s friend beckons him farther and farther, and the farther they get from home, the more the friend seems to change . . . until he is no longer human at all. Horrified, the boy listens to the creature’s proposition: return home before dawn, or be lost forever to the other side . . .

Complemented by haunting illustrations from Toma Feizo Gas, The Other Ones is a fresh take on modern horror by an exciting new Inuit voice.

In Edo-period Japan, readers relished works known as kibyōshi that combined text and illustration on the same page, much like comic books and manga. Monsters often took center stage in these stories. This book presents a selection of Edo monster comics in English for the first time, introducing readers to a captivating, humorous, and eye-opening genre of popular fiction.

The River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales collects five kibyōshi published between 1778 and 1807, chosen for both entertainment value and stylistic variety. Their authors reinvent traditional Japanese monsters as contemporary characters who mirror the foibles of the human world. They tell stories such as: The lover of the long-necked rokuro-kubi makes a ridiculous attempt to rescue her from her human captor. A mischievous river creature steals a jewel lodged deep inside a boy’s buttocks, setting off a curious chain of events involving a historical samurai and a real-life “fart man.” A demon girl from hell is sent to the world of the living in order to destroy a sacred Buddhist statue—but things don’t go quite as she plans.

Exploring the grotesque, comic, bumbling, salacious, and charming world of these creatures, the stories also provide a glimpse into the society and culture of Edo-period Japan through the monsters’ distorted lens. The kibyōshi are reproduced in their entirety, conveying the feel of the original comics and allowing readers to experience the full visual impact of the monsters.

In Edo-period Japan, readers relished works known as kibyōshi that combined text and illustration on the same page, much like comic books and manga. Monsters often took center stage in these stories. This book presents a selection of Edo monster comics in English for the first time, introducing readers to a captivating, humorous, and eye-opening genre of popular fiction.

The River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales collects five kibyōshi published between 1778 and 1807, chosen for both entertainment value and stylistic variety. Their authors reinvent traditional Japanese monsters as contemporary characters who mirror the foibles of the human world. They tell stories such as: The lover of the long-necked rokuro-kubi makes a ridiculous attempt to rescue her from her human captor. A mischievous river creature steals a jewel lodged deep inside a boy’s buttocks, setting off a curious chain of events involving a historical samurai and a real-life “fart man.” A demon girl from hell is sent to the world of the living in order to destroy a sacred Buddhist statue—but things don’t go quite as she plans.

Exploring the grotesque, comic, bumbling, salacious, and charming world of these creatures, the stories also provide a glimpse into the society and culture of Edo-period Japan through the monsters’ distorted lens. The kibyōshi are reproduced in their entirety, conveying the feel of the original comics and allowing readers to experience the full visual impact of the monsters.

Rosslyn Chapel, eight miles south of Edinburgh, Scotland, has captured the imagination of many in recent years. This extraordinary building, dating from the fifteenth century, has long been a place of pilgrimage for people with widely differing interests, whether historical, architectural or spiritual.

P.L. Snow has for many years been gathering the stories that are represented by the numerous carvings inside and outside the chapel building. Many of the carvings, eroded by the years or damaged by vandalism during the Reformation, have been lovingly restored over time. They are eloquent illustrations of the biblical, historical and legendary tales that they represent.

This book traces themes of transformation and metamorphosis through inward endeavor, and will be fascinating for anyone interested in stories from the beginnings of the world, Ancient Egypt, the Holy Land, Celtic myth and Scottish history.

Alongside his work with the Camphill movement, Karl König was a prolific writer of stories, poems and meditative verses. This book contains a selection of his creative work, including verses for specific occasions, twenty-four poems, four stories for children and ten other short stories, including 'Also a Christmas Story'.

An extensive introductory essay explores the cultural environments in which König was writing – including Vienna in the early twentieth century, and the challenging times leading up to the Second World War in Europe – and discusses the creative development of his literary work.

First on the Rope – the acclaimed English translation of the French fiction classic Premier de Cordée by Roger Frison-Roche – is a tale about the harsh lives of mountain guides and their families in the French Alps in the 1920s and 1930s.

An ascent of Mont Blanc as porter with his uncle leaves young Pierre further convinced he wants to be a mountaineer, breathing the crisp, pure air and soaking up the splendour of the wild landscape. But his family have other ideas. Chamonix is becoming ever more popular with tourists wanting their thrills on the slopes, and they all need somewhere to stay. Running a hotel, however, is not Pierre’s idea of fulfilment.

Among the glittering peaks and desolate passes, wonderful sunsets and wild winds, tragedy strikes across the Vallée Blanche on the Dru: a brutal storm leaves sadness and destruction in its wake. Can the onset of spring and the hope it brings rebuild Pierre’s passion for climbing?

First on the Rope epitomises the rhythm of mountain life, the clanking cowbells and the gurgling streams set against the formidable grandeur of the ice and rock. Equip yourself for an immersive and emotive experience in the high Alps.

‘Far off on the horizon the snowfields sparkled, and across the meadow the Piz Molino towered formidably above the glacier, its snow cone glittering in the pale blue sky.’

North Wall is award-winning writer Roger Hubank’s first novel. The premise is one familiar to those with a thirst for adventure at high altitude: two men attempting to climb one of the world’s most challenging peaks; yet at its core this is a story that examines the nature of climbing itself: trading familiar earthbound comforts for the allure of the mountains and risking it all to achieve the extraordinary.

Following a first ascent that ended in tragedy, the Alps’ most demanding mountain – the staggering 3,753-metre Piz Molino – awaits a second ascent. Two very different climbers step up. Raymond, an experienced mountain guide, is struggling with demons after being left the sole survivor of a previous expedition. Daniel is an amateur torn between his need to climb and his responsibilities as a husband and father. Together they attempt the treacherous 1,200-metre North Face.

‘Perhaps that is why we have been reduced like this … deprived of those we love – stripped of all certainty – so that we may learn what it is to be ourselves.’

North Wall takes the reader on a gripping journey. We follow Raymond and Daniel through tragedy and triumph as they face both the physical challenges of the dangerous ascent and the psychological turmoil of finding themselves along the way.

A must-read for anyone interested in the quest to complete life’s more extreme feats.

A Seattle detective begins investigating the murder of a sex trafficking survivor in the care of a local nonprofit organization. He unknowingly launches a series of events that reveal founder and CEO Elizabeth Knight and her team are not who they say they are.
A respected advocate and lecturer on human rights issues in her community, Elizabeth is forced to face a past once carefully erased after crafting a future much more fitting to her wealthy family’s legacy.
Following an electrifying career that allowed her to watch red tape, politics, and money enable oppression and corruption around the world, she decided to leave her NYC home for a fresh start on the Pacific Northwest coast. Tragedy strikes five years after beginning her nonprofit work, and she’s forced to stay one step ahead of the Seattle Police Department in a deadly game that threatens her identity, and the lives of those closest to her.
Based on true events, The Fenix Projects follows the journey of a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing care to sex trafficking survivors. Elizabeth has a small team dedicated to providing support, education and awareness for survivors through housing, medical care, scholarships and counseling.
Set against the Seattle skyline, The Fenix Projects is an action packed thriller exposing the dark side of human trafficking in the Pacific Northwest in a high stakes battle for modern vigilante justice.

BOOK ONE OF THE BUTTERFLY TRILOGY

From New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Harvey comes an arousing, passionate story of three women’s hidden desires and the place called Butterfly, where dreams are kept and where fantasies come to life.

Above an exclusive men’s store on Rodeo Drive there is a private club called Butterfly, where women are free to act out their secret erotic fantasies. Only the most beautiful and powerful women in Beverly Hills are invited to join: Jessica, a lawyer who longs for the days when men were men, and women dressed to please them; Trudie, a builder who wants a man who will challenge her—all of her—with no holds barred; and Linda, a surgeon, who uses masks to unmask the desires she hides even from herself.
But the most mysterious of them all is the woman who created Butterfly. She has changed her name, her accent, even her face to hide her true identity. And now she is about to reveal everything to realize the dream that has driven her since childhood—the secret obsession that will carry her beyond ecstasy, or destroy her and everyone around her.

The long-anticipated spring offensive pitches the Union and Confederate armies against each other on the Virginia Peninsula, and it appears that Richmond and the fledgling Confederacy are doomed. As the Southerners fall back before the slowly advancing Northern army, Mac is reunited with his older brother, Will, when Stonewall Jackson's triumphant troops arrive from the Shenandoah Valley to blunt the Federal onslaught. The fortunes of the Southern army change dramatically when Robert E. Lee is made commander.

Lee's army strikes a stunning blow to the Northern army as his legions cross the Potomac River into Maryland. When the Federals intercept the Rebels near Antietam Creek, the two brothers are brought together in the bloodiest trial of the war thus far. The air is thick with shot and shell as wave after wave of Northern soldiers are hurled upon the Southern lines grouped near the town of Sharpsburg and a river of death.

Antietam is the third book in this ten-volume series, spanning the Civil War and describing one Southern family. As the Brannon brothers answer the call to arms the family finds itself struggling with dilemmas it had never imagined.

The narrative of Chancellorsville begins in Mississippi and the situation on the western front. Before reaching Vicksburg, Cory Brannon stumbles into a campsite where all is not well and briefly encounters a cautious Confederate patrol. A veteran of the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson and Shiloh, but not a soldier in the Confederate army, h continues to search for Lucille Farrell, the daughter of his late employer. When he finds her, he also discovers that he may have a role to play in supplying the South with the food, weapons, and ammunition being brought in through Texas by blockade-runners. The path, however, is strewn with renegades and outlaws, and on the horizon there may be a rival for Lucille’s affections.

Meanwhile, Cory’s brothers, Will and Mac, enjoy a brief visit with the family members still in Culpeper. Will is greatly relieved that his mother, Abigail, who had banished him from the farm in the weeks before the war, now welcomes him with open arms. Brother Titus’s marriage to Polly Ebersole comes as a surprise to the two brothers in gray, but their presence stirs a sense of obligation and duty in the hotheaded Titus. Shortly after the two return to their units—Will to the Shenandoah with Jackson and Mac with Stuart near Richmond—the Confederate cause claims another Brannon, this one a gifted rifleman.

In December 1862 a new Union commander launches another campaign to claim the Southern capital, and Ambrose Burnside brings the Federal army to Fredericksburg. With him marches the conscience-driven Nathan Hatcher. When the battle breaks loose, Will and Mac are on the right side of the Confederate line, and Titus is on the left. After the terrible bloodletting of the Federal defeat, news comes that Titus has been lost. The brothers carry the information back to Culpeper, where the aloof Polly surprisingly grieves over the loss of Titus, her husband. She reaches out to the Brannon family and finds a comforting response from the people she has tried to keep at arm’s length.

In early 1863 a fitful calm pervades the Virginia front until yet another Union commander is named. Joe Hooker leads his army into the wooded wilderness of the Rappahannock again and confidently stakes his fortunes to an encounter with Robert E. Lee near the roadside inn at Chancellorsville. As the battle rushes toward them, Will and Mac witness the boldest move a field commander can make and the greatest loss the Confederacy can struggle to bear.

Chancellorsville is the fourth book in a series of historical novels spanning the Civil War.

Criminal defense attorney Darcy Cole has his hands full. In the middle of one of the biggest cases of his distinguished career, an unsatisfied former client puts out a contract on his life. To make matters worse, Darcy is suffering through a midlife crisis. Although he is a successful attorney, he feels old and lost and weary, and during his frequent sleepless nights he wonders just what he has to show for his life.

Darcy’s beautiful, self-centered client, Lynne Tobias, has been charged with arranging the murder of her wealthy husband for the insurance money. Her flamboyant behavior creates problems for her defense, and the suspense mounts as Darcy duels with a brilliant female prosecutor who matches his courtroom strategies trick for trick. When justice finally prevails, the verdict is as unpredictable as the ending.

Vicksburg is the fifth volume in a series of historical novels spanning the Civil War featuring the Brannon family of Culpeper County, Virginia. The focus turns to the west and the Southern stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Cory Brannon is working to keep the town supplied by wagon train and railroad from Texas.

Vicksburg is the key to the Mississippi River and the future of the Confederacy, and Abraham Lincoln wants to put that key in his pocket. For almost a year the Federal army and navy have tried to dislodge the Confederates, but they have gained nothing. Finally, Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the battles at Forts Henry and Donelson and the battle of Shiloh, is dispatched to take the town.

Cory and the woman he loves, Lucille Farrell, are working with her uncle, Col. Charles Thompson, and a small contingent of dedicated Southerners. In the spring of 1863, as the Union army begins to close in, Cory must abandon that venture to take on a vital mission for Confederate Gen. John Pemberton, the commander in charge of Vicksburg's defenses. At the end of Cory's journey, however, is an even more dangerous foray into Western Tennessee and over the border into Kentucky with the horse soldiers of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Cory's mentor from the battle of Shiloh. To help save Vicksburg, Cory becomes both a cavalry raider and even a spy.

Yet his efforts cannot prevent the inevitable as the Yankees eventually surround and lay siege to Vicksburg. With the Northern army set to seize the city, Lucille must also cope with additional challenges as she encounters a returning friend with secret plans of his own. The Federal bombardment, illness, injury, and starvation all take their toll on the defenders of Vicksburg, forcing Cory and Lucille to face decisions that threaten not only their love but their very lives.

The third volume in The Tennessee Frontier Trilogy, The Canebrake Men is a saga of adventure set in the period from 1785 to 1800. In it Cameron Judd paints a portrait of the unforgettable men and women whose vision, passion, and pain gave rise to the new nation, such as:
-- Joshua Coulter, who had made a life amid the dangers of the rugged frontier and had been tamed by the Tennessee Wilderness, only to discover again a deep restlessness that stirred in his heart
-- Owen Killefer, who set out for the Chickamauga country as a boy to avenge a bloody crime
-- Emaline Killefer, who was torn from her family in a bloody raid by a British deserter and taken to live among the Chickamauga as his unwilling wife
-- John Sevier, the frontiersman who led raids against the Indians and was named governor of a would-be state the federal government never recognized
-- Andrew Jackson, a brash young lawyer with a fiery temper, who first met Joshua Colter as an opponent in a brawl but soon became a strong ally and loyal friend

Readers enthralled by the works of great mystery and crime writers will find something new in Opening Shots. This collection offers not only the first published short stories of twenty prominent writers, but also features each author’s recollections of the trials and thrills of making that unforgettable first sale. 

Opening Shots humanizes legendary writers and revisits the cutting-edge work from which raw talents broke through in bold and sometimes experimental fashion. Joan Hess’s “Death of a Romance Writer” offers a nifty and humorous literary twist—an inside joke—that Hess describes as “a dollop of revenge for all the abused heroines of romantic fiction.” But there’s nothing funny about James Sallis’s “Jim and Mary G,” a disturbing story with a sad conclusion that can be interpreted in more than one way. Says Sallis, “I was just starting to try and write stories that might be read in several ways, or on several levels, simultaneously.” 

Between its wide variety of stories and styles and its candid personal reflections from the authors themselves, Opening Shots is a compelling anthology that entertains and offers a glimpse beyond the page and into the mind of the writer. 

The narrative of Chancellorsville begins in Mississippi and the situation on the western front. Before reaching Vicksburg, Cory Brannon stumbles into a campsite where all is not well and briefly encounters a cautious Confederate patrol. A veteran of the battles of Forts Henry and Donelson and Shiloh, but not a soldier in the Confederate army, h continues to search for Lucille Farrell, the daughter of his late employer. When he finds her, he also discovers that he may have a role to play in supplying the South with the food, weapons, and ammunition being brought in through Texas by blockade-runners. The path, however, is strewn with renegades and outlaws, and on the horizon there may be a rival for Lucille’s affections.

Meanwhile, Cory’s brothers, Will and Mac, enjoy a brief visit with the family members still in Culpeper. Will is greatly relieved that his mother, Abigail, who had banished him from the farm in the weeks before the war, now welcomes him with open arms. Brother Titus’s marriage to Polly Ebersole comes as a surprise to the two brothers in gray, but their presence stirs a sense of obligation and duty in the hotheaded Titus. Shortly after the two return to their units—Will to the Shenandoah with Jackson and Mac with Stuart near Richmond—the Confederate cause claims another Brannon, this one a gifted rifleman.

In December 1862 a new Union commander launches another campaign to claim the Southern capital, and Ambrose Burnside brings the Federal army to Fredericksburg. With him marches the conscience-driven Nathan Hatcher. When the battle breaks loose, Will and Mac are on the right side of the Confederate line, and Titus is on the left. After the terrible bloodletting of the Federal defeat, news comes that Titus has been lost. The brothers carry the information back to Culpeper, where the aloof Polly surprisingly grieves over the loss of Titus, her husband. She reaches out to the Brannon family and finds a comforting response from the people she has tried to keep at arm’s length.

In early 1863 a fitful calm pervades the Virginia front until yet another Union commander is named. Joe Hooker leads his army into the wooded wilderness of the Rappahannock again and confidently stakes his fortunes to an encounter with Robert E. Lee near the roadside inn at Chancellorsville. As the battle rushes toward them, Will and Mac witness the boldest move a field commander can make and the greatest loss the Confederacy can struggle to bear.

Chancellorsville is the fourth book in a series of historical novels spanning the Civil War.

Following on the heels of the successful first volume of this series, the stories in this stellar field include:

"Final Rites" by Doug Allyn • "Don't Kill a Karate Fighter" by William Chambers • "Entrapped" by Harlan Coben • "Yellow Gal" by Michael Collins • "Together" by Jeffrey Deaver • "The Rough Boys" by Harlan Ellison • "Tole My Cap'n" by Joe Gores • "Layover" by Ed Gorman • "A Bunch of Mumbo-Jumbo" by Jan Grape • "The Cure" by David Handler • "Till Tuesday" by Jeremiah Healy • "Village of the Dead" by Edward D. Hoch • "Chalk" by Evan Hunter • "It's a Wise Child Who Knows" by Stuart Kaminsky • "Who Killed Cock Robin?" by H. R. F. Keating • "Medford & Son" by Dick Lochte • "Thieves' Honor" by John Lutz • "Not All Brides Are Beautiful" by Sharyn McCrumb • "Manslaughter" by Joyce Carol Oates • "You Don't Know What It's Like" by Bill Pronzini • "The Disappearance of Penny" by Robert J. Randisi • "A Victim Must Be Found" by Henry Slesar • "Blue Rose" by Peter Straub • "A Bad Night For Burglars" by Lawrence Block

In this eighth volume of the ten-volume Civil War Battle Series, the action returns to northern Virginia and Culpeper County. The long absent Titus Brannon returns home on Christmas Day, 1863, just over a year since his disappearance during the battle of Fredericksburg. As much as his family is startled to learn that he is alive, he is surprised to find that his wife, Polly, is now married to his brother Henry. And she is pregnant.

Unwilling to accept Polly and Henry's marriage, Titus insists that Polly is still his wife, and a judge agrees. He refuses to divorce her, and later Polly's body is found at her father's plantation. The evidence points to Titus, and he is arrested and jailed.

As spring approaches, Will Brannon recuperates from his Gettysburg wound and returns to his regiment. In the meantime, a new commander leads the Union army into northern Virginia—U.S. Grant. To block Grant's march on Richmond, Robert E. Lee attacks. Grant, however, does not retreat after this surprise engagement but marches on. The two armies clash again and again, maneuvering ever closer to the Rebel capital.

Will throws himself into the battles with abandon. At last his pain ends at the portentously named crossroads, Cold Harbor.

After Titus's innocence is proven, he joins the partisan rangers of John S. Mosby. This guerrilla-style warfare suits his nature, and the rangers so effectively harass the Federals in the rich farmland of the Shenandoah that Grant dispatches a special force to squash Mosby. This unit adopts a policy of total war in the valley so as to undercut Mosby's support.

Titus vows vengeance on the Yankees for this wanton destruction, but even he knows that there is little chance that the tide will be stemmed. Both the Confederacy and the Brannons have suffered much in the year 1864. Now even the hotheaded Titus begins to wonder if the nation and his family will survive into 1865.

In the midst of fraud and deception, murder and betrayal, Darcy battles a legal system that seems more adept at administering injustice than in protecting the innocent.

Sometimes a simple plea bargain is not what it appears to be, as criminal defense attorney Darcy Cole learns when he takes the case of Harry Feigler, a Chicago attorney who specializes in expunging the records of men who have been caught soliciting prostitutes. Sometimes also, Darcy reminds his associate Kathy Haddon, when a husband regularly comes home in the evening smelling like a bar and claiming to have been out with "friends," there may be no cause for alarm. Sometimes, too, a black man accused of murder in an apparently open-and-shut drug case has been set up and is innocent, and a beautiful, apparently distraught young woman who reports the disappearance of her boyfriend to the police is lying to distract attention from a real crime.

Sometimes even a middle-aged police officer whose life is spiraling toward disaster discovers the inner qualities of character that attracted him to law enforcement in the first place, and the luck of the draw in emergency room physicians brings together a disenchanted lawyer and an overworked doctor in a romance that sizzles from the moment they first meet. These story lines, which at first glance appear to have no connection to one another, come together with high drama and humor in Plea Bargain. Nothing, it seems, is as it appears, and Darcy must sift through the illusions and deceptions to come to the actual truth. 

Criminal defense attorney Darcy Cole is facing one of the biggest cases of his distinguished career, but at the same time he must deal with his own midlife crisis. He has just won an acquittal for his client—beautiful, self-centered Lynne Tobias—from the charge of murdering her husband, a prominent Chicago attorney. But now Cole and Tobias are facing federal charges of conspiracy to defraud an insurance company in connection with the death of her husband.

This new charge has been brought by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Owen Dempsey, who is running for governor. He knows that prosecuting Tobias will provide him with massive, and free, election-year publicity. A notorious self-promoter, Dempsey has a reputation as a ruthless politician with an infallible knack for getting the right kind of headlines.

Cole, however, is exhausted, worn out. A brilliant criminal defense attorney, he has made his career the central focus of his life. While he appears to be a successful man, he has had no personal life since his wife divorced him years earlier. He feels old and lost and weary. During his sleepless nights, he sits alone in his penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Michigan, trying to imagine what sort of lives the people on the expressway below live, remembering the mistakes he's made, and wondering if he has anything to show for his life.

By day, however, Cole is energetic and intimidating. He out maneuvers his opponents and plots brilliant strategies to defend his client from the government's charges, anticipating the dirty tactics of Dempsey's office and devising a few of his own.

Complicating matters is Anthony Benvenuti, Jr., who has put out two contracts for Cole's death. The youngest son of Tony "the Babe" Benvenuti, a prominent figure in the Chicago underworld, Tony Jr. is bitter about his conviction for drug-related offenses and blames Cole, his attorney. Although the father has decreed that nobody is to accept the contracts, two freelances are missing and presumed to be hunting for Cole. 

Filled with brilliant legal maneuverings and surprise after surprise, The Advocate spins a complicated, frightening, often humorous path through a spectacular federal trial, ruthless organized crime activity, a verdict that is totally unexpected, and a conclusion that will leave even the most avid mystery readers wondering why they didn't see it coming. 

Roy is a good husband, Penny reminds herself, but he can pinch a nickel until Thomas Jefferson hollers "Uncle!" A hard, dominating man, he bristles when Penny offers to roll the coins—no wife of his needs to waste time rolling mere pennies.

Penny has never kept a secret from her husband, but as her hoard of castaway change grows, she discovers that having money of her own gives her the power to make her own decisions. Beginning with something as small as a furtive trip to a fast-food restaurant in a Georgia town, she finds that small change can eventually lead to big changes.

Thirty-four years later, Roy finds a check for $1,500 drawn on an account bearing only Penny's name. He is bewildered, wondering how his wife, who has never worked outside their home in her entire life, managed to come by so much money. His quest to unravel this mystery leads him to other discoveries about the woman he thought he knew so well. Roy learns just how many lives Penny has touched and just how well his wife had known his secrets all those years—and her example shows him how to begin life anew.

Small Change is a deceptively simple story that explores the human condition in a rich emotional portrait. A remarkable tale of an ordinary housewife who leaves an extraordinary legacy, it reminds us of the true spirit of charity, the effects of poverty, and the tragic self-silencing that limits the richness of far too many women's lives.

The third volume in The Tennessee Frontier Trilogy, The Canebrake Men is a saga of adventure set in the period from 1785 to 1800. In it Cameron Judd paints a portrait of the unforgettable men and women whose vision, passion, and pain gave rise to the new nation, such as:
-- Joshua Coulter, who had made a life amid the dangers of the rugged frontier and had been tamed by the Tennessee Wilderness, only to discover again a deep restlessness that stirred in his heart
-- Owen Killefer, who set out for the Chickamauga country as a boy to avenge a bloody crime
-- Emaline Killefer, who was torn from her family in a bloody raid by a British deserter and taken to live among the Chickamauga as his unwilling wife
-- John Sevier, the frontiersman who led raids against the Indians and was named governor of a would-be state the federal government never recognized
-- Andrew Jackson, a brash young lawyer with a fiery temper, who first met Joshua Colter as an opponent in a brawl but soon became a strong ally and loyal friend